Do you recommend having different email platforms to send marketing emails (e.g. quarterly product newsletters) vs transactional ones (e.g. confirm email, forget password)? What about different emails domains?
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Yes - recommend using different subdomains for different types of emails (e.g. m.domain.com for marketing emails and t.domain.com for transactional)I worked on deliverability at a past company and we worked with Sendgrid’s optimization team and they recommended moving to multiple subdomains. It was one of the bigger wins for us. Separate subdomains also protect you in the future if, for example, the marketing domain gets hit with a penalty - your transactional emails would still go through fine.
RE: Using different email platforms - it’s not going to help or hurt from a deliverability perspective. Suggest using what works best for you from a tech and product perspective.
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Solid advice from @Lawrence above. I like to think of it in tiers and each tier has its own subdomain. Tier 1 is transactional and since those are absolutely essential to your business, they need their own subdomain and dedicated IP if you are a larger company. If you are quite small, chances are you are using an ESP that shares IP (rotational) for transactional and marketing and the above advice doesn’t matter as much. That said, it’s never too early to have a dedicated IP for transactional emails. Tier 2 and above are for different types of marketing sends that vary in importance. (Ex: new product feature versus promotional emails).The biggest area where startups stumble is with high volume cold outreach emails that are associated with your primary domain and hurt reputation… but that’s a whole different subject.
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Thank you very much @LawrenceMartin & @NathanEndicott that was super helpful. We will set up different subdomains for transactional and marketing, and likely a dedicated IP for transactional.
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Hi! I wanted to add a note on the “different email platforms” question. We currently use Braze for marketing emails and Sendgrid for transactional but ideally would be on one platform. The reason being that Braze is known more for marketing emails and Sendgrid is really good for transactional emails. Braze did not support transactional emails well historically, but I heard they have a new feature that does support transactional emails now. Depending on send volume, I haven’t seen a great solution for both transactional and marketing on one platform (but would love to be challenged on that!) 
I also agree with dividing transactional and marketing emails by IP, and consider using a shared IP if you have small volume. That way you know your emails are reaching the inbox and can focus more on the content of the emails, rather than the deliverability.
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That’s a great point @PriyaVarma. Nowadays, most ESPs have transactional settings that marketers can use OR APIs that support transactional, but if your volume is high enough, Sendgrid or Mailgun are by far the best cost effective, reliable options. I think Iterable could be the front runner right now for sending both types of emails.
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Vero – handled transactional emails well when I last used it, but that was a few years ago.
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I have one client using Vero right now. It plays nice with Segment, and does support Transactional. What it doesn’t do well is combine transactional and marketing in the same workflow. Example - I want to trigger a receipt email for a purchase and then send follow ups in the same workflow that require an opt-out.
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Thanks for joining the thread @PriyaVarma!
We’re using Customer.io for marketing and a partially for transactional now, but looking into SendGrid for transactional only (vs using Customer.io for everything)
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Interesting how diverse these answers are.
We’re on Mailgun + mailchimp, but would 100% switch to Iterable for both if I had $25K I was eager to spend.
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